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Well, for some reason I never received my WEEK 3 Stats Report via email from FitBit.

So on to Week 4 instead. This was a very active week thanks to Thanksgiving and all of the hiking that I did with my dogs! Weight loss was minimal but my trend is still going down and I’m happy with the weeks results. I didn’t log any sleep with the FitBit this week.

Thanksgiving with the family is all about food and eating, so making healthy choices and all of the extra hiking really helped out this year!

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Since I have FITT on the brain, I thought I would talk about it a little as well.

It is commonly agreed that fitness students need to be empowered to construct and tailor workouts to meet their individual health-related fitness needs.

Each component of health-related fitness is important to teach even very young students. This approach will help combat today’s media, which emphasizes the need for outward appearance over health and wellness.

Overload and progression are two basic training principles.

Overload refers to the amount of load or resistance, providing a greater stress, or load, on the body than it is normally accustomed to in order to increase fitness. Progression is the way in which an individual should increase the load. It is a gradual increase either in frequency, intensity, or time or a combination of all three components.

The FITT Principle describes how to safely apply the principles of overload and progression:
FrequencyIntensityTimeType (specificity)

FrequencyFrequency is how often a person performs the targeted health-related physical activity. For each component of health-related fitness, a safe frequency is three to five times a week.

IntensityIntensity is how hard a person exercises during a physical activity period. Intensity can be measured in different ways, depending on the related health-related component. For example, monitoring heart rate is one way to gauge intensity during aerobic endurance activities, but gives no indication of intensity during flexibility activities.

TimeTime is the length of the physical activity. As with the other aspects of the FITT principle, time varies depending on the health-related fitness component targeted. For example, flexibility or stretching may take 10-30 seconds for each stretch, while the minimum time for performing aerobic activity is 20 minutes of continuous activity.

TypeType or specificity, refers to the specific physical activity chosen to improve a component of health-related fitness. For example, an individual wishing to increase arm strength must exercise the triceps and biceps, while an individual wishing to increase aerobic endurance needs to jog, run,
swim or perform some other aerobically challenging activity.

There is a relationship between heart rate and oxygen consumption – particularly at intensities ranging from 50-90% VO2 max. So traditionally, exercise intensity has been prescribed as a percentage of maximum heart rate (calculated as 220 – age). For example, a 30-year old with a maximum heart rate of 190bpm might train at 75% maximum or 143bpm.

One of the problems with the 220-age equation is that it makes no allowances for individual differences in resting heart rate. By incorporating the heart rate reserve into the equation, in theory a more accurate training zone can be determined.

The Karvonen formula uses the heart rate reserve to calculate training zones based on both maximum AND resting heart rate. Here’s the actual formula:

Here’s an example for a 50 year old with a resting heart rate of 65bpm who wants to train at 70% maximum

220 – 50 = 170bpm (maximum heart rate)

170 – 65 = 105bpm (heart rate reserve)

(105 x 0.7) + 65 = 139bpm

Using the Karvonen formula this persons target heart rate works out as 139bpm. To create a zone you might want to subtract i.e. 129 to 139bpm

Using the traditional 220 – age formula this same person would have a target heart rate of 119bpm, which is considerably lower (220 – 50 x 0.7). Its worth noting that the Karvonen formula nearly always calculates a higher target heart rate than 220 – age.

Here is a rough guide to different heart rate zones and the adaptations they elicit:

Recovery Zone – 60% to 70%
Active recovery training should fall into this zone (ideally to the lower end). Its also useful for very early pre-season and closed season cross training when the body needs to recover and replenish.

Aerobic Zone – 70% to 80%
Exercising in this zone will help to develop your aerobic system and in particular your ability to transport and utilize oxygen. Continuous or long, slow distance endurance training should fall under in this heart rate zone.

Anaerobic Zone 80% to 90%
Training in this zone will help to improve your bodys ability to deal with lactic acid. It may also help to increase your lactate threshold.

It is important to remember that the heart rate reserve method of prescribing exercise intensity is by no means flawless.
Firstly, estimating a person's maximal heart has been shown to have inaccuracies compared to laboratory testing - where exercise intensity is increased until a plateau in heart rate is found.
Secondly, the heart rate reserve tells us nothing about a person's lactate or anaerobic threshold. By recording heart rate data along side the point at which lactate threshold is thought to occur, a far more effective training plan can be devised.

Hopefully, this info can help you pinpoint a better target heart rate!

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This morning I had a discussion with a co-worker about eating eggs for breakfast. He complained that he isn’t getting enough daily protein.

My first suggestion to him was to eat some eggs for breakfast instead of his usual health bar. Not only is the bar he eats low in protein, but it’s really high in sugars and saturated fats. I indicated that eating two large eggs for breakfast either scrambled with no butter or hard-boiled would give him a better boost in protein and would actually be better for him overall.

His response was: ‘No way! Eggs are bad for you! They give you really high cholesterol levels!’

Now I had to take exception to this statement, because I’ve actually done a little research on this particular topic.

Here’s a sampling of one report that I read:

Cracking the Cholesterol Myth
More than 40 Years of Research Supports the Role of Eggs in a Healthy Diet
Many Americans have shied away from eggs – despite their taste, value, convenience and nutrition – for fear of dietary cholesterol. However, more than 40 years of research have shown that healthy adults can eat eggs without significantly impacting their risk of heart disease.
And now, according to new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrition data (1) , eggs are lower in cholesterol than previously recorded. The USDA recently reviewed the nutrient composition of standard large eggs and results show the average amount of cholesterol in one large egg is 185 mg, a 14 percent decrease. The analysis also revealed that large eggs now contain 41 IU of Vitamin D, an increase of 64 percent.
Studies demonstrate that healthy adults can enjoy an egg a day without increasing their risk for heart disease, particularly if individuals opt for low cholesterol foods throughout the day. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Heart Association recommend that individuals consume, on average, less than 300 mg of cholesterol per day. A single large egg contains 185 mg cholesterol.
Several international health promotion organizations – including Health Canada, the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Australian Heart Foundation and the Irish Heart Foundation – promote eggs as part of a heart-healthy diet, recognizing that they make important nutritional contributions. (2)
REFERENCES
(1) In 2010, a random sample of regular large shell eggs was collected from locations across the country to analyze the nutrient content of eggs. The testing procedure was last completed with eggs in 2002, and while most nutrients remained similar to those values, cholesterol decreased by 12% and vitamin D increased by 56% from 2002 values.
(2) Klein CJ. The scientific evidence and approach taken to establish guidelines for cholesterol intake in Australia, Canada, The United Kingdom, and The United States. LSRO. 2006 www.lsro.org. Accessed November 2006.

Here is another article that talks about specifically about cholesterol:

Cholesterol
First, one has to understand that cholesterol is not necessarily bad. Humans need it to maintain cell walls, insulate nerve fibers and produced vitamin D, among other things. Second, there are two types of cholesterol: dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol . Both are important.
Dietary cholesterol is found in certain foods, such as meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, and dairy products. The second type (blood cholesterol, also called serum cholesterol) is produced in the liver and floats around in our bloodstream. Blood cholesterol is divided into two sub-categories: High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL), and Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL). LDL cholesterol is considered bad because it sticks to artery walls.
What is bad, however, is the amount of LDL blood cholesterol in the body. Too much of it can cause heart problems, but scientists are now discovering that consuming food rich in dietary cholesterol does not increase blood cholesterol.
Evidence showing that eating a lot of dietary cholesterol doesn't increase blood cholesterol was discovered during a statistical analysis conducted over 25 years by Dr. Wanda Howell and colleagues at the University of Arizona. The study revealed that people who consume two eggs each day with low-fat diets do not show signs of increased blood cholesterol levels.
So what does raise blood cholesterol? One of the main theories is that saturated fat does. Of the three types of fat (saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated), saturated fat raises blood cholesterol and LDL levels. It so happens that eggs contain mostly polyunsaturated fat, which can actually lower blood cholesterol if one replaces food containing saturated fat with eggs.

Bottom line: Eggs are a great source of protein and are much lower in dietary cholesterol that most people know. If you happen to have high cholesterol levels, be sure to talk to your doctor about eating eggs before you decide to remove them from your diet completely.

Enjoy!

— PFM

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I’ve been trying out a lot of nice gadgets lately and one of them is a Fitbit Ultra. It’s a small unit about the size of a thumb drive and is used to monitor various activities. This chart shows my first weeks statistics with the Fitbit.

It keeps tracks of how many stairs you climb, you many steps you take, how well you sleep at night and even has an estimate of how many calories you have burned. It does just about everything, but it’s not a heart rate monitor. If you want to track your heart rate, you’ll still need a separate unit for that.

I like how compact it is and that you don’t have to plug it in to transfer the data. It comes with a USB stand that attaches to a computer and you just need to be within 15 feet or so of the stand and it will auto-transfer your stats. It even syncs with a Withings scale!

The website that works with the unit also lets you log additional exercises or activities and even has a food tracker.